


can't carry it with you if you want to survive

by glownary



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Background Amami Rantaro, Background Saihara Shuichi, Background Tojo Kirumi, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Choking, During Canon, False Memories, Gen, Killing Game Was A Virtual Reality Simulation (Dangan Ronpa), Minor Character Death, One-Sided Attraction, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Sedation, Unrequited Love, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25355377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glownary/pseuds/glownary
Summary: There are certain things that an assassin must cast aside in order to survive. It was easier for her than it was for most....Or at least, that's how she remembers it.(An exploration of Harukawa Maki and the nature of remorse.)
Relationships: Momota Kaito & Oma Kokichi, One-Sided Harukawa Maki/Momota Kaito
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	can't carry it with you if you want to survive

**Author's Note:**

> please make sure to read the additional tags for trigger warnings!

Remorse was one of the first things her childhood friend taught her.

"I can't play with you today," the little girl told her with teary eyes. "I'm in time out."

Maki stared blankly at her. "Why?"

"I took extra cookies when the grownups weren't looking, but they caught me."

Maki narrowed her eyes. "So what? They're just cookies. This isn't fair."

But the girl just shook her head. "No, I shouldn't have done it. They told me that those cookies were for the other kids." She looked at the ground sadly. "I feel bad. I wouldn't want someone taking cookies that were meant for me."

The little girl accepted her punishment because she felt that she deserved it, and Maki struggled to understand that—who cares about the other kids? But the girl was her only friend, and she trusted that she must've been right, even if Maki couldn't comprehend it.

###### 

Remorse was the first thing she unlearned.

That is, the first thing they tried to make her unlearn. Truthfully, it was a lesson she hadn't had a strong grip on in the first place.

"It's the target's life or your own," they would tell her. Maki took that to heart, even during training—she was merciless when sparring against the other trainees, treating them as if they were her targets. In a way, they were; it was possible that any one of them would try to kill her in the future to usurp her position as the organization's most powerful tool. She gained no pleasure from hurting the others… but she did feel a sense of pride at the organization's praise. If she was truly their top weapon, that meant she was too valuable for them to dispose of.

Even as they beat each lesson into her, she held onto her only desire: to survive. She couldn't explain it if she tried, but she desperately wanted to live—and for what? To continue the miserable existence of a slave? It would make more sense to wish for death as a mode of freedom. Still, she clung to life.

Eventually, after being their "most talented pupil" for some time, Maki was sent on her first mission. _It's the target's life or your own,_ she thought to herself. She repeated it over and over again in her mind like a mantra. As she strangled the man to death, watching the life fade from his eyes, her mind was blank save for that phrase.

He dropped to the floor in a heap. The man was dead and she could live another day. To feel bad, or to mourn the loss of a life at her hands, didn't even cross her mind—this was what it meant to survive.

###### 

Remorse was a luxury she couldn't afford.

There was no room for remorse or guilt as she tallied up the bodies. She wasn't sure if she could feel guilty for her survival even if she tried, so she just didn't think about it.

If she couldn't afford to be remorseful as an assassin, she certainly couldn't afford it within the killing game. Watching Kaede give a tearful goodbye at the end of her trial gave Maki… unusual feelings she couldn't put a name to. Why was Kaede sorry? If she felt bad about her own failure, or the fact that she was about to die, Maki could understand that. But that wasn't it. Kaede felt a profound guilt at taking an innocent life, and she accepted her own death as a deserving punishment.

Worse still, it seemed that some of the others had taken her feelings of guilt as an absolution of her crime. She became a martyr in their eyes the moment she was gone. Maki couldn't understand. Regardless of her reasons, had she not planned and carried out a murder? Kaede was a killer, just like Maki was, was she not?

Inexplicably, Maki was _angry._ The post-trial conversation was much more painful for her than watching the execution. Death made sense to her. Emotions didn't. She pushed that anger down and tossed it aside with all the other feelings she had ignored over the years.

###### 

Remorse was something she didn't care to try and understand.

Love was something else entirely.

She didn't think much of him at first. Kaito was loud, obnoxious, and annoyingly optimistic. He was stupid, and reckless, and not particularly good at solving murders.

He was also overflowing with a love that he was more than willing to share with those around him. Once Kokichi revealed her talent, Maki had expected to be outcast completely—yet Kaito immediately came to her side and told her that she was more than what they made of her.

Not once in her life had Maki been told she had worth outside of killing. As far as she was concerned, it was all she was good for. But the feeling Kaito's words gave her was addictive, and she chose to spend more and more of her time with him.

He told her she was human. He told her she was capable of being good. She soaked up his love and ignored the meaning—she didn't know what it meant to be "good," and she couldn't care less, as long as Kaito kept looking at her like that.

It was then that Maki decided she would kill someone—everyone, even—to keep Kaito alive if she had to.

###### 

Remorse never came into play for her.

She didn't feel bad in the slightest for shooting Kokichi. She was horrified that Kaito was shot as well, but—why should Maki feel guilty about that? She couldn't understand why he had jumped to block her shot. It didn't make any sense.

She didn't feel bad about trying to sacrifice the remaining group just to kill Kokichi, either. Her revenge on him was well deserved. Maybe the others couldn't understand, but she felt justified when Shuuichi suggested that he agreed with her. If even the detective agreed, there was nothing to feel guilty for—her anger was righteous and her bloodlust was nothing to apologize for, even if she was willing to take four extra lives as collateral.

So why did Kaito look at her like that once he revealed himself? Why did he flinch away from her, when she confessed her feelings for him? He gave her a non-answer and turned away, quick to walk towards his execution after giving some final encouragement that those left could defeat the mastermind.

Maki was heartbroken, but never once was she sorry.

###### 

Remorse was something Ouma Kokichi did not deserve.

Admittedly, Maki didn't understand the feeling of remorse very well. But she was certain Kokichi didn't deserve it. His motive video meant nothing to her—the fact that he wasn't a remnant meant nothing to her—nothing she could learn about him would change her mind.

So when she woke up from the simulation and found him alive, she attempted to rectify that immediately.

She lunged for the throat, all of her implanted knowledge of murder racing through her mind; press the fingers in like this, focus the pressure here. Kokichi gasped for air instinctively, but his eyes were dull, nothing like the fire he had held within him during the game. She didn't care. She pressed harder.

Just when Kokichi was about to lose consciousness, two large arms wrapped around Maki and pulled her harshly away. Kaito.

He restrained her as she struggled against him—so desperate to finish the job, just a minute longer and Kokichi would be dead for real—until the nurses came with a syringe to pacify her. Even as the drugs coursed through her and her body grew heavy, she clawed at the air between herself and Kokichi.

His empty eyes were the last thing she saw before falling into a dreamless sleep.

###### 

A danger to herself and others. That's what the facility labeled her when they decided she needed an extended stay before she could be safely released back into the world. She wasn't allowed to mingle with the others after that, but she could see them through the window of her door. Kaede strolling by at a leisurely pace as she held what appeared to be a deep conversation with Rantarou. Shuuichi wandering around aimlessly by himself. Kirumi carrying out pointless little errands, unsure of what else to do with herself.

Kaito and Kokichi whispering to each other. Sometimes Kokichi would say something and Kaito would laugh, and Kokichi would grin back at him, clearly pleased that his joke landed. She couldn't hear what they were saying but it made Maki's skin crawl. Her eyes never left his neck, and the bandages there that barely covered the marks she had left him. A reminder for the time being that his time was borrowed; that the remorse Kaito had given him was undeserved. 

But the marks would fade. And he would leave the facility long before she could.

Eventually, she stopped looking out the window. She couldn't bear the thought of peering out one day to find that the others had all been released already. Instead, she took to watching clips of herself from the game. She was never one for being sentimental, but she had nothing else left. With every little piece of information she gave about her past during the game, she pulled on her pigtails harder in the present. 

Remorse, and the lack thereof… remorse, and the inability to feel it… She thought back to that day as a child at the orphanage, when her best friend told her that she felt bad about taking some extra cookies. She didn't understand remorse then, and she didn't understand remorse now—

But she did understand that the little girl wasn't real, and never had been. She understood that the memory was fabricated, along with every other memory about killing grown men in cold blood.

She couldn't feel remorse because they didn't want her to. Because they made her this way. She clenched and unclenched her fists at her sides repeatedly.

They made her this way because they wanted her to be changed by love. She knew this now—that they made her to be changed by Kaito. To be a loveable side character. To have a moving, romantic character arc. She rolled her shoulders and laid down on the bed, curling up into fetal position.

Despite knowing that her feelings were manipulated by the company, it still stung that Kaito didn't love her. But she was a failure to the show, and at the very least, she could take solace in that.

Maybe she would never understand remorse, but by claw and tooth she would survive in a world that wasn't made for her, and that would have to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> title lyrics taken from "dog days are over" by florence + the machine


End file.
